Discussed by his contemporaries through the opposition "own or foreign", identified by the next generations as a writer from the so-called "Balkanist" literary line, in his short satirical stories, the Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912) demonstrates his sense for the oriental backwardness of the mores, from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Even though Caragiale’s critics associate him for his supposed foreign origin and claimed that made him overly critical of Romanian society, he was not afraid to expose the falsity and to ridicule the Bucharest self-proclaimed elite with their pretentions standing in stark contrast to their trickster approach to life and their nationalist disposition. The "foreign" Caragiale, with his sense of the peculiarities of the Romanian world, has created remarkable humorous and satirical images of "his own” compatriots and of life in the small Paris.
This article briefly introduces the French-speaking writers Agota Christof, Georges Papazoff, Petar Ouvaliev and Panait Istrati and argues that the choice of a foreign language cannot be a sign of preference for this specific language, since the language does not decide for the content of literary work. Preexisting representations determine the nature of art.
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